Apple Revenue Misses Forecasts: Hot Trends

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- Popular searches on the Internet include Apple(AAPL) after the company reported fourth-quarter revenue that fell short of Wall Street forecasts.

It was the third quarter in a row in which Apple missed revenue estimates. For the fiscal first quarter, Apple reported it shipped a record 47.8 million iPhones, below analysts' expectations of 50 million.

With iPhone sales coming in below expectations, speculation is growing that the tech titan could be losing its luster and the six years of speedy growth the company experienced after the introduction of the iPhone could be coming to an end.

Apple reported quarterly profit that rose less than 1% to $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per share, its slowest rise in profit since 2003.

Apple has changed the way it delivers its financial outlooks to investors. Instead of giving conservative estimates, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company will give a range.

Google(GOOG) is trending after announcing a redesign of its image search feature.

The company now claims that Google image searches will be faster, more reliable and more visually appealing. Images will now be featured in a panel that allows the user to flip through them quickly using their keyboards. In addition, information about each image will be shown more prominently alongside it. The title of the page where the image is found, the domain name of its location and its size will be included. Users can also click on the domain name for each image or click a new button that will take them to the page where the image is found.

The ultimate result of the redesign cuts down on the amount of clicks needed in an image search and is expected to be quicker for the user.

Users will see the redesign "in the next few days," according to Google.

Sony(SNE) is another popular search. The company has just been fined 250,000 pounds ($396,000) by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office in relation to the PlayStation Network being hacked in April 2011.

The ICO found that the company was to blame for security failings and that the hack could have been prevented. According to David Smith, ICO's director of data protection, Sony stored a lot of personal customer information and "should have known better." Smith said the security measures in place "were simply not good enough."

Sony said it plans to appeal the fine. In a statement, Sony said it was the victim of a "focused and determined criminal attack" and that the personal data accessed is unlikely to have been used fraudulently.

The hack exposed personal data of about 100 million PSN accounts and resulted in the shutdown of the network for several weeks. At the time, Sony apologized for the incident and offered a "Welcome Back" promotion that included free games to PSN users.